That much we know from the title track to “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” the 2002 Flaming Lips album that’s about to make the leap to the live stage as a world-premiere musical at La Jolla Playhouse.

And what else is known about the years-in-the-making show that pairs one of rock’s most exquisitely eccentric bands with one of Broadway’s most respected directors, Des McAnuff?

Such is the almost fabled aura around this long-awaited show that, like a robot attaining consciousness, “Yoshimi” the musical seems to have willed itself into being without any human intervention. At least in some minds.

“I’ve run into people who thought they’d already seen it,” says Lips leader Wayne Coyne of the musical. “I said, no, you haven’t seen it yet. Maybe you were on drugs that night.”

But starting next week in La Jolla, people will see it. No pharmacological assistance necessary — although the way this show is shaping up, it might prove to be its own sort of multimedia head trip.

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Playhouse artistic director Christopher Ashley says “Yoshimi” is the most technically complex production the theater has undertaken since he arrived five years ago. It’ll incorporate a 17-foot-tall robot that takes five people to operate, plus extensive projections that (among other things) convey some dialogue through simulated texting.

And not only is the show driven by the Lips’ atmospheric, psychedelic music, but its story promises to move freely between the realms of the rational and the fantastical, as it follows the saga of a young Japanese-American artist fighting a deadly illness.

McAnuff, the former Playhouse artistic chief who has returned to direct the show (and shares story credit with Coyne), says that kind of binary feel is a signature of the piece.

“There’s more than one level of reality in (the storytelling of) ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,’ ” says McAnuff, a multiple Tony Award-winner for such Playhouse-launched shows as “The Who’s Tommy” and “Jersey Boys.”

“And it combines (Japanese) anime with American pop culture, so there’s a duality there as well. And also, we’re attempting to combine art and science” — to the point that McAnuff has consulted with top minds in the local biotech and medical fields.

It’s fair to say that “Yoshimi” also grapples with perhaps the ultimate binary question: that of life versus death.

The music of the Flaming Lips — the Grammy-winning band founded in Oklahoma City in 1983 — is often shot through with meditations on mortality. That sense of grappling with existential questions, says Coyne, was “exactly the thing that Des gravitated toward” when the musical adaptation had its first stirrings some eight years ago.

“(But then) I think most of the Flaming Lips music, for whatever reason, is based on death,” he continues. “I think a lot of people’s art is. There’s just something about, ‘I have to say this because I’m afraid I’m going to die.’

“Whenever you’re having any kind of joy in your life, for me it almost always goes to, ‘Omigod, I don’t want you to die, because we have so much fun!’ It’s always about remembering that these are (just) moments; that this isn’t the way it’s going to be forever.”

For McAnuff, though, one element of “Yoshimi” trumps even the focus on life’s fragility.

“I hope the thing you get from this more than anything is it’s a love story," McAnuff says. "That’s the other theme (Coyne) returns to over and over — and not in a syrupy, sentimental kind of way. He has a great, big beating heart, and it permeates everything he writes.”

Romance and robots

On a recent afternoon inside a Playhouse rehearsal hall, as McAnuff and Co. roll out a bare-bones preview of some “Yoshimi” numbers, there are few robots in evidence (pink or otherwise). But there is a glimpse at how McAnuff has fashioned Coyne’s lyrics (along with a smattering of his own writing) into a narrative about a gutsy young woman who’s in for the fight of her life.

Suddenly, Yoshimi collapses and is rushed to a hospital (a scene set to “Mr. Ambulance Driver” from “At War With the Mystics”), where a doctor portrayed by Playhouse returnee Tom Hewitt informs her she has aggressive lymphoma.

“Your body is at war with itself,” he says, urging her to fight off the malevolent “pink cells” that are programmed to destroy her.

And then the title song moves Yoshimi into battle mode, with the show’s sprawling ensemble doing martial-arts-style movement.

The show’s tech elements will be integrated into all this, along with the virtuoso puppeteer Basil Twist’s various robot creations — including the towering Unit 3000-21, who proves crucial to the story.

As for how robots came to be part of the story in the first place? The ever-whimsical Coyne says at one point that Unit 3000-21 is “more based on a dog I had that I really admired.”

But he also says the overall notion of robots first entered his head when he heard the screeching of Yoshimi P-We — a drummer and vocalist from the Japanese band The Boredoms who collaborated on (and helped inspire) the album — and thought it sounded as if “she was either being killed by a giant robot or having sex with a giant robot.”

(Talk about duality.)

Strange history

That’s just one of the colorful aspects of this show’s conception and long development. Consider also that (by Coyne’s account, anyway) the idea to make “Yoshimi” into a musical was first suggested to the band by big-time fan Laura Bell Bundy, the actress who played the pert sorority girl Elle Woods in Broadway’s “Legally Blonde.”

(Coyne says affectionately that “I’m always reminded of what a weirdo she was, just to come out of the blue and say, ‘I want to do this, I want to be Yoshimi.’ ”)

Or consider that after McAnuff became involved, his good friend Aaron Sorkin of TV’s “The West Wing” talked his way into writing the adaptation for the fantastical rock saga, until McAnuff realized there really wasn’t a script to be written. (McAnuff says he and Sorkin, whose Broadway-bound “The Farnsworth Invention” premiered at the Playhouse in 2007, are now working on a different, unnamed project.)

All along, McAnuff has believed in the theatrical streak to the Lips’ music (and their legendary, bonkers concerts) that not only buoys it through the most sobering themes but makes it a natural fit for the stage.

“They manage to take on these very serious subjects, which include loss and mortality and grieving and the brevity of life,” McAnuff says. “But they manage to embrace those themes in this really celebratory way.

“Their concerts really are like children’s shows for adults — there’s this wonderful, uplifting atmosphere that gives Wayne license to look at some pretty serious things.”

Coyne, for his part, sounds as though he has won his own epic battle against doubt in embracing this new life for “Yoshimi.”

“I think for the longest time, I would’ve thought something like a Broadway musical was really the enemy of something like rock ’n’ roll,” Coyne admits.

Later, he worried that perhaps the “Yoshimi” musical “would be more popular than even our music, and people would think of us differently,” he says. “But that was just me being stupid and insecure, and now I don’t think that at all.

“I hope it’s the biggest, greatest thing that has ever happened. And when people ask, ‘What’s it about?’ I still say, ‘I don’t know, it’s Des’ idea. I’m just the guy who wrote the music.’

“But it’s completely because of his love for it. We’ve met a lot of people who love our music, but I’ve never met anybody who has loved it as much as he has. And that’s a great compliment.”